


Alexandria Newton

by ashryvergrace



Series: If The World Knew... [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Healers, Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2020-05-28 17:23:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19398853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashryvergrace/pseuds/ashryvergrace
Summary: Alexandria Newton was always the sort of person who could be relied upon to be in the place where the most trouble was. Wars, battles, anything which could give even the smallest rush of adrenaline. And vampires? Her mother had warned her to stay away, but the dark allure of the unknown was always there, waiting to pull her into the abyss.





	1. France, 1917

I squeezed my eyes shut and attempted to block out the sounds around me, the sounds of bombs whistling as they flew overhead, the sounds of soldiers biting back screams of agony. The man lay before me was no more than seventeen, only two years older than me. His hands were coated with his blood from the bullets which had torn through his abdomen. My scalpel shook slightly as I breathed to calm myself so I could fish the last bullet from his gut. The boy stared at me with fear, blood on his lips. I closed my eyes, feeling the wound, feeling that foreign metal inside him and then I swiftly and surely made one final cut, releasing the bullet and dropping it into the tin next to me. I picked up the scalpel again, flexing my hand and wrist to get the blood flow going after I had been cramped in that position for so long. I cut into my palm and my blood bloomed on the surface, bright green, even under the flickering light of the yellow lamps. I pressed my hand to his gut, letting my blood mingle with his. All it would take was for a few drops to reach his heart. The instant it did, I felt it. His back arched and he shook on the bed but he would live. I kept my hands over his wounds until I could feel them healing. Only then did I stand up, exhausted and move on to the next patient. I told myself one more. One more. Then I could sleep. 

"Alexandria Newton. Go to your sleeping quarters now. I do not want to see you in here for another twenty-four hours do you understand?" I whirled to find Doctor Meadows standing next to a nearby patient.

"But sir. I can help."

"I'm serious Alexandria. I will send you straight back to America if you don't do what you are told." I nodded and sighed, my eyelids drooping. I headed for my sleeping quarters, stripping off my apron and falling onto my bed fully clothed.

~~~~~~~~~~

At some point, I ended up changing into my nightgown, though I don't remember doing it. By the morning, the soldier's screams had died down a little. I glanced at the clock and sighed, standing up and stretching. It was just past five in the morning and the sun was rising, casting a golden orange glow over the world. I wandered outside, curling my toes into the grass, dewdrops catching the morning light. I wandered towards the stream, stripping off my nightdress and jumping into the clear, freezing water. Blood from the previous few days washed away as I swam. After a little while, my mom joined me in the water, also washing away days worth of filth. There wasn't ever time to wash properly, not with the constant barrage of dying soldiers. This early morning swim was about the best chance we would get. After an hour, I climbed out onto the bank and pulled my nightdress back on. At six in the morning, almost everyone was either already up and getting ready for the day or just finishing their night and getting ready to go to bed. I said hello to various nurses and medics on the way past, collecting dirty laundry to wash today.

Washing bedsheets and other linens took up the majority of my morning and as soon as I'd eaten lunch, I put clean sheets I had washed a couple of days ago on the beds and then went to my own to try and catch another few hours. Someone roused me just before dinner. I ate quickly enough to give me indigestion - but then again, when did I not? - before heading through to the main area of the medical tent. "Alexandria! It's been, ooh, seventeen hours since I told you to take twenty-four hours off. Exactly what are you doing here?"

"Helping," I said, picking up a basket of clean linens to take around to the nurses and patients who needed them. "You need me. Besides. I'm rested. I've had ten hours of sleep. It's more than most of you get, alright?" Doctor Meadows stared at me skeptically but sighed and nodded, knowing I was right.

"For a fifteen-year-old, you're bloody stubborn." I raised my eyebrows and smirked, heading off to help a nurse with an amputee.


	2. Home

The war ended. Just like that, it was over. The guns, the grenades, the cannons, everything fell silent. Of course, it wasn't really over. There were hundreds of thousands of wounded soldiers lying in the mud of the battlefield, waiting for someone to notice them. Those that could still scream were okay. Those that could not...well, we couldn't save everyone. Whatever power made us different, made me and my mom and the other healers different, it was drained. But it was only when every last living soldier had been pulled off the battlefield and dosed with enough of our blood to heal them, only then did we take the first ship back across the atlantic with the American soldiers who were able to be moved. Though the conditions on the ship were less than pleasant, it was far better than the heat and noise of the front lines. 

When we arrived home we found a telegram from my father. He was with the troops who were healing much faster than a normal human would - thanks to mine and my mother's blood - waiting for the next boat which would take them home. He'd made it. I smiled to myself as I climbed into the first proper hot bath I'd had in four years. I let the feeling of the heat sear across my skin at a temperature which was almost painful. Steam rose from the water, clouding the mirror and the window. Despite everything, we'd all made it. I rubbed the scar on my palm. Though it wasn't common for healers to have scars, they did occur, especially when the same wound or injury was reopened several times, which this one had. I cracked my knuckles under the water, listening to the pop of my joints and savouring the heat of the water. I remained in the bath until the water ran cool before climbing out and cuddling into the softest towel I could find. 

My mom made us a heavy afternoon tea, borrowing things from the people next door since all of our stuff had been given away to friends at the beginning of the war when we'd left to join the nurses and doctors. Cake and tea and biscuits and little sandwiches which our neighbour had somehow managed to conjure from somewhere. I ate until I was full before slowly walking up the stairs and heading to my room.

It was nice to lay down on my own bed in my own bedroom for the first time since we'd left. I braided my hair out of the way so that it might turn wavy while it dried before shutting off the light and settling down. It may only have been five in the afternoon, but I was utterly exhausted, physically and mentally. 

I slept until one in the afternoon the next day when my mom got me up to have some lunch. Twenty hours solid without waking up - my mum had slept only an hour or two less than I had, but both of us felt surprisingly refreshed, despite the terrifying dreams which plagued our sleep. In our village, the only sounds were the birds chirping away to each other, the occasional car engine, the sound of children laughing, but everywhere I looked I saw mud and blood, war and weapons, pain and ruin. Every time I closed my eyes, the screams of the dying echoed in my thoughts, their faces a muddy blur etched onto my brain. 

In the weeks that followed, people would ask how we were. _'Fine'_ we said, avoiding a long and tedious discussion about our feelings. My father returned home and was greeted by the whole town. He was their hero, children where a little scared, but mostly in awe of him, asking to see his uniform, his cap. Sometimes, they come round and offer to polish his shoes or the buttons on his jacket. It was sweet. But when the doors were closed, we would cry or just sit in silence, bonded over the horrors we had seen. My mom told my father: "In all my eighty years, I have never seen anything like that war." He embraced her gently for a moment before letting me sit on his lap. I was sixteen, really too old to be sitting on his lap, but it was nice to lean backwards into his warm, solid chest and listen to the steady thud of his heart. My mom always believed physical contact with other humans was one of the best things a person could have and now we needed it more than ever. 

I pulled out my mom's old sewing machine. When we'd returned, people gave us old clothes, ones their daughters or sons had grown out of. I pulled them apart and stitched them back together to create dresses for the Christmas Ball, held annually in the town hall. The decorations were sparse; mostly paper chains made and decorated by the children. Someone had found a star to sit atop the tree that five of the men had hauled in from the forest on the edge of town. Otherwise, the holiday was uneventful.

I returned to school in January. While I had been away, I'd spent my spare time - which was admittedly not very much - reading and learning, doing school work my mom set me so when I returned, I was not too far behind and I quickly caught up. My mom managed to persuade her bosses at the hospital a town over to give me a part time job, working a six hour afternoon shift every Saturday and Sunday afternoon between twelve and six. The steady regularity of school and work gave me something to rely on, something to get up in the morning for, a purpose and a little bit of money so that I could go and see a film with my friends on a Friday afternoon since we finished school around lunchtime.

But there was still something off. It wasn't that I missed the war, the violence, the bloodshed. No, it was more that I missed the feeling it gave me, when someone was brought in, someone who was teetering on the edge, the feeling when the stood up and shook my hand and marched off, headed home safely to their parents or their girlfriends, their wives and their children. I'd been living off adrenaline for four years and now, I was living in a safe little neighbourhood. Safe. God, I hated it. I wanted to spread my wings, to go to the city, to New York or Los Angeles. To fly away from the small minded girls in my class who thought it was rebellious to go out after eight in the evening.

Sometimes, I climbed up onto the roof of our house to think. I realised then that something had changed while I'd been away. Something in my core, in the centre of my being, something fundamental was different. It was on the roof that I first met Priya, a beautiful girl with an accent to die for from a country far away. There was something about her that was different. She wasn't like the girls who were only looking for a little excitement. She wore a pleated skirt, which was scandalously short, with boyish shorts underneath - she claimed they were for comfort and to stop her thighs rubbing and the idea wasn't entirely without its merits. 

Somehow, she could keep up with me, with what I could do. She didn't bear the glowing green eyes and blood of a healer, but she made the three-storey jump from the roof of my house to the ground with nothing more than a faint pop from her left knee. I followed her over the edge, rolling to take the impact out of my knees. Being a healer didn't mean I didn't get hurt, I was basically human, I wasn't faster or stronger, I could still break bones and dislocate joints and pull muscles like the next person, I just healed so quickly that it never really made a difference. But her...I couldn't place it. We spent the first night we met talking and running wildly through the forest on the edge of town. I returned in the early hours of the morning when the sunrise was still a few hours off. Outside my front door, Priya smiled.

"I will see you?" She asked

"Would you like to?"

"I think, yes, me would like that." I smiled a little.

"Okay. Why don't we meet up on friday evenings? I can teach you English properly and you can teach me whatever you want to teach me. It should be 'I' would like that." Priya nodded and smiled.

"Yes. _I_ would like that." I smiled and she hugged me before leaving with a devilish grin. Leaving by jumping onto the roof of my house. I raised an eyebrow. A healer could not do that.


End file.
